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Taiwan's cabinet responded to the 2025 US "reciprocal tariff" escalation with a two-stage response: an emergency soft-launch on 7 August 2025 that reallocated existing budget headroom to four industry-support programmes, followed by the 11 September 2025 Executive Yuan passage of a dedicated special-budget bill ("因應國際情勢強化經濟社會及民生國安韌性特別預算案") that formally appropriated NT$46 billion (~USD 1.5bn) to MOEA to fund them at scale. The four programmes are financing-side, not tariff-offsetting subsidies: preferential export-loan guarantees (up to NT$60m per SME at a 9.5% guarantee ratio, fee-waived for 2 years), SME diversified-development loans (up to NT$35m, capped at 2.22% interest), R&D/equipment-transformation subsidies (up to NT$5m per firm, NT$40m per consortium), and overseas-market-expansion subsidies (up to NT$5m per firm to establish showrooms, service centres, or distribution networks abroad). Target industries named in follow-up reporting are metal/machinery, consumer goods, chemicals, and general manufacturing exporters — i.e., broad-based exporter relief rather than a single strategic sector.
domestic industrial-policy finance to absorb US tariff shock rather than seeking a bilateral rate cut — complements the later 2026-02-12-us-taiwan-agreement-reciprocal-trade deal that did secure a rate reduction.
2025) gives a rare quantified read on how fast an SME-loan-guarantee channel absorbs demand after a tariff shock — useful as a benchmark for sizing similar EU/Japan/Korea programmes.
number) contains sector-specific carve-outs beyond the four generic measures described in MOEA's press communications.